V.] 
DEATH OF BARENTS. 
253 
May Barents declared that if the vessel were not got off before 
the end of the month, they should return in boats, which were 
therefore immediately got ready. This was, however, attended 
with great difficulty, because most of the crew had during the 
course of the winter become exceedingly weak, evidently from 
scurvy. After the equipment of the boats had been completed 
and they had been properly laden with provisions, the Dutch at 
last started on the June. 
*A man had died on the At the beginning of the boat 
voyage Barents himself was very ill, and six days after, on the 
IJth June, he died, while resting with his companions on a 
large floe, being compelled to do so by the drift-ice. On the 
same day one of the crew died, and on the ’|th July another. 
On the the returning Arctic explorers at St. Lawrens’ 
Bay fell in with two vessels manned by Russian hunters, 
whose acquaintance the Dutchmen had made the year before, 
and who now received them with great friendliness and pity for 
their sufferings. They continued their voyage in their small 
open boats, and all arrived in good health and spirits at Kola, 
where they were received with festivities by the inhabitants. 
It gave them still greater joy to meet here Jan Cornelisz. Rijp, 
from whom they had parted at Bear Island the preceding year, 
and of whose voyage we know only that he intended to sail up 
along the east coast of Spitzbergen, and that, when this was 
found to be impossible, he returned home the same autumn. 
After the two boats, in which Barents’ companions had 
travelled with so many dangers and difficulties from their winter 
haven to Russian Lapland, had been left in the merchant’s yard^ 
at Kola, as a memorial of the journey—the first memorial of 
^ Built along with a weigh-house intended for the Norwegians in 1582 
by the first vojvode in Kola {Hamel, p. 66). In Pontanus {Rerum et 
urhis Amstelodamensium Historia, Amsterodami, 1611, p. 142), there is 
a drawing of the inner yard of this house, and of the reception of 
shipwrecked men there. 
